Im looking for one now, l'll sit it out until one comes along at the right price.
It would be on a D90 for now, which works pretty good for me at the moment.
Would be nice to be able to meter on the those manual prime lenses ive been getting into, but im getting better at that one with the help of a hand held light meter.
I guess there's only one version of the 70-300mm AF-S VR?

Yes, it is too bad that those old lenses won't meter. However, if you really want to get the most out of them you may want to look at investing in a D7000, or wait until the D300s' successor is released. I love the ability to meter with my AI-S primes on my D7000, I think that function alone is worth upgrading for.

And yes, there is only one 70-300 VR. I believe that Canon makes two, a 70-300 IS and a 70-300 IS L, but Nikon only offers one. I've noticed recently that Canon seems to have a much better telephoto lens selection than Nikon.

I figured it was good practice to go manual and get a better understanding of exposure settings which it has helped.
I usually have to end up tweaking a bit in Photoshop unless i get really lucky.
Favourite at the moment is the Nikon 200mm f4, that was a bargain for the results you can get.
l'll keep going with the D90 for a while, can't really justify upgrading yet.
Hopefully S/H prices will have become realistic by the time i get around to changing.
Good news with the single version of the 70-300mm VR, that narrows it down some what...

I agree, going manual can help you get a better understanding of exposure, but nowadays where everything is automatic it isn't as necessary as it used to be. Manual focusing however still is somewhat important as autofocusing systems aren't always entirely accurate, and it's important to get a good eye to manual focus when the lens is off.
I own the 200mm f/4 as well, which is probably the old prime that I use the most, and it will serve until I decide to upgrade in the future. It certainly has improved my manual focusing skills.

Its a keeper for me, i had to convert it as it was pre AI.
I think i had one of last conversion kits here in the UK.
Don't think its been used in years but its it great condition.
I might have to get one of those viewfinder magnifying things, the green dot helps but i could do with a bit of magnification sometimes..

Its not really difficult to get the exposure right. Everybody can get that right.
The difficult part comes when to decide what shutterspeed or aperture you want for certain effects.

Because you can get the exposure right with 1/100 sec shutterspeed but also at 1/12 sec shutterspeed and by changing ISO settings and Aperture you still can get right exposure but the result of the photo can be quite different.

That is where the true photographer really shines when he truely knows how to do that. I gues you just need years of experience to really know how to get that right to make a photo that makes you a photo contest winner.

BTW I have my exposure compensation on my D7000 on -0.3EV is pretty close usually to what it should be. Most of the time I just set a black control point and a white control point in Capture NX2 and the results look spot on most of the time. Of course its difficult to really make a good judgement without calibrated equipment.

Sometimes I use a color control point to repair some white overexposed sky. Well maybe overexposed is a wrong word. becuase the subject at the focus point is always correct.

I find the D90 can over expose and i prefer to knock it back to -0.3 or -0.7 EV when using chipped lenses.
Looks more natural to me, but obviously depends on conditions..
Its usually the levels and contrast in Photoshop for me.
Anyway gone for a new 70-300mm VR in the end, hopefully should be here for the weekend.
Seeing them go through on Ebay for over £300 S/H there wasn't much in it to go for new. I got it for a very good price Anyone want to buy a Tamron 70-300mm LD Macro?!
No thought as much, on Gumtree it goes...

Lens turned up today, straight out after work looking for wildlife up the road.
Way better than the Tamron, which is to be expected. Hope for some sun over the weekend as it was very overcast and raining here today..
Looks like a really good buy so far.

I use the 70-300mm on A D7000. I set exposure compensation at -0.3 looks beter on my laptop, not sure what happens if I print out some picture becuase it can look quite different then, so I would not be to fast on judging the exposures. I hardly print any photos anymore because I never look at it back again, unless I make a big poster size printout and hang it on the wall.

Usually the exposure is correct right at the focus point but maybe not at the whole image when its high contrast situations (not sure if the D90 has he same exosure technique).

I correct this in CaptureNX2. I set a Black & white point in CaptureNX2 and that usually give me perfect exposure just as I want it. Then sometimes I use color control points to rescue some local overexposures such as bright skys.

Your bottom 2 pictures look a bit overexposed but it could just be my crappy laptop screen.

If you want and with your permission I can rescue it a bit in captureNX2 with Black & white control points.

That butterfly looks really nice. I tried to make lots of butterfly pictures but they are all very camera shy so i ended up with some blurry stuff not with mentioning.